The Jackdaw and the Peacocks

John Vernon Lord, 'The Vain Jackdaw' (The Jackdaw and the Peacocks), 1989. Illustration from wood-engravings from 'Aesop's Fables', retold in verse by James Mitchie, Published by Jonathan Cape, London. National Art Library Pressmark: 60.HH.46

Copyright

Copyright Victoria and Albert Museum

John Vernon Lord, 'The Vain Jackdaw' (The Jackdaw and the Peacocks)

John Vernon Lord'The Vain Jackdaw' (The Jackdaw and the Peacocks)1989Illustration from wood-engravingsFrom 'Aesop's Fables', retold in verse by James MitchiePublished by Jonathan Cape, LondonNational Art Library Pressmark: 60.HH.46

John Vernon Lord (born 1939) used the area around his home in Ditchling, Sussex, as setting for his Aesop's Fables illustrations. His pen and ink drawings are painstaking in their detail and resemble wood engravings. Lord used mapping and Rotring pens and sometimes a blunted ruler for parallel lines. Wax was sometimes added to the paper to resist the ink, giving a luminescence to some of the backgrounds. In an essay on 'Hatching', Lord wrote; "The editing and selection of gap-making is fundamental to drawing… A picture is made up of a balancing between the making, the removing, and the not-making of marks."

Lord has been a prolific illustrator for nearly fifty years as well as teaching illustration at Brighton Art College. His past work includes an album cover for Deep Purple's 'The Book of Taliesyn' in 1968 and book illustrations to 'The Giant Jam Sandwich' in 1972 and 'The Nonsense Verse' by Edward Lear in 1984, both published by Jonathan Cape. He still illustrates, working now with the Inky Parrott Press on Lewis Carroll's 'Alice in Wonderland'.